The Mechanic

Rating:* ½

Movie Review: The Mechanic This dull remake of a 1972 film starring Charles Bronson makes you miss the beefy star who made a career out of peering balefully out a leathery face when he was not throwing his fists about. This time around,the mechanic is played by Jason Statham who is buffed as befits a contemporary action star,and displays no beef as he goes about doing what needs to be done : killing people on contract,without leaving a mark on them.

The tension arises from Arthur ( Statham) being tricked into bumping off old friend Harry ( Sutherland). This leads to a pacy sequence of a wheelchair-bound Sutherland setting himself up for the kill,but there aren’t too many of those in the film,which offers us a series of blood-soaked confrontations between Arthur and Harry’s son Steve ( Foster),who wants to be an apprentice ‘mechanic’,and who is unaware that his reluctant mentor is the man responsible for him being an orphan. There’s some nice stuff that Foster brings to his anguished son,who slowly discovers the identity of his father’s killer,but it’s left unexplored : tears in men’s eyes need to be shown very briefly in a crash-bang film,otherwise what’s the point?

‘The Mechanic’ gets a low score even by the abysmal standards set by Statham and the kinds of films he assembly-lines : quite often the film forgets that it needs a story before careering off for another bloody kill. For relief,if you count that sort of thing,there are some naked women flitting about,giving Statham a chance to take his vest off; the rest of the time is filled with men playing with guns and getting them off.

shubhragupta@expressindia.com